


Sanctuary

by SailorChibi



Series: aro-ace Valentine fics [7]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Aromantic, Aromantic Character, Asexual Character, Asexual Q, Asexuality, Bond is a menace, Bond is just chill, Bond is more ambiguous, Gen, I'm headcanoning him as aromantic, I'm not even sure it can be called angst, James Bond Has Issues, Lack of Communication, Platonic Relationship, Q Has a Cat, Q has issues, Q is long-suffering, Q is openly aro-case, Q just worries a lot, Q loves his agents, That gets resolved, and it all works out in the end, and that's why his relationships don't work out, aro-ace character, aromantic Q, james bond needs a hug, more like Q angsts over what Bond wants from him, so they fit together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 18:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9778112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SailorChibi/pseuds/SailorChibi
Summary: Ever since Bond’s return from leaving with Swann, he seems to have set his sights on Q. Not even being flat out told about Q’s sexuality has served to deter him.Bond wants Q. But not for the reasons that Q or the rest of MI6 think.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written 00Q for ages, but I thought it would be a nice addition to what's becoming a yearly tradition of writing aromantic/asexual fics for Valentine's Day. I tried to post this yesterday, but AO3 would _not_ cooperate and I finally gave up.
> 
> Note: someone who is aromantic does not experience romantic attraction, though they can (of course) still be in a relationship. Someone who is asexual does not experience sexual attraction. Some asexual people can and do enjoy having sex, but Q does not.

It surprised no one when Bond showed up at MI6 roughly than three months after he left the country with Swann. He submitted himself to testing, was judged to be worthy to go back out on the field (even if it was with some reluctance on the part of the psychiatrists), and was out on a mission within two weeks. Frankly, the most surprising part was that he’d waited that long to return. Q, who had placed a wager on Bond returning at seven weeks, was decidedly grumpy about having lost the bet.

Purely for curiosity’s sake, he looked up Swann one morning while Bond was out in the field. It didn’t take very long to track her down. She was living in Japan now under an assumed name, working as a therapist for children with mental health issues. According to her social profile she wasn’t seeing anyone, but try as he might Q could find no indication that she and Bond were in communication. By all appearances, the two of them had come to an amicable split.

And truly, by all accounts Bond was in fine form out on the field. Q, who had assigned himself to 007 the moment he found out Bond was back, found himself regretting that decision. Apparently Bond had never received the memo that not every mission needed to be a honeypot. And then he made the mistake of saying as much one day when Bond was returning the scattered remains of the gun and high-tech mobile he’d been sent out in the field with.

Bond just looked down at him, face full of amusement. “Jealous, Q?” he inquired.

“Hardly. Just tired of listening to you have sex.” Q picked up a piece of what might have once been a battery and sighed. That had taken two months of work to produce and all of twenty seconds to destroy.

“Maybe you’ll pick up some tips,” Bond suggested, leaning against the desk. “I could show you in person, if you like.”

“Are you propositioning me?”

“Yes.”

“I hardly think it’s appropriate for a quartermaster to sleep with his agent.”

“Your agent, am I?” Bond purred.

“For god’s sake,” Q said, more amused than he wanted to let on. “I’m not interested in having sex with you or anyone else. I’m asexual. And aromantic, for that matter, though that’s neither here nor there. Though I have to admit, occasionally I have to wonder if M considered that one of the perks in hiring me. No need to worry about me falling for an agent’s flirting and getting in over my head.”

“I didn’t know that about you.”

Q shrugged. It was an open secret around MI6. He’d been upfront with his orientation after realizing it was the easiest way, short of inventing a partner, to make some of the more amorous agents back off. The ones who persisted even after finding out about his sexuality, insisting that Q just ‘needed a good fuck to see the light’, typically found themselves on the other side of a gun. 006 and 002 were particularly fond of their quartermaster.

“Try to be more careful with your equipment,” he said. 

Bond gave him a careless salute and headed out of Q’s office. Q rolled his eyes after the man and picked up the tray. Most of what was left would just need to be binned properly, so by all rights he should be pissed with Bond. But there was just something about the impossible man that made it difficult to be angry with him. Suddenly, he had new appreciation for exactly why the old M used to get so frustrated.

If he thought, though, that the casual flirting would decrease after Bond found out that nothing would ever happen, he was wrong. Not that Q paid much attention to it. Bond flirted as easily as he breathed; it was in his nature, and it was part of what made him such a good double-0 agent. And it was almost nice, in a way, to know that it meant nothing. That it was just Bond being Bond.

Well, that was what Q believed right up until Bond showed up on his doorstep one night after going MIA during a mission.

“What the hell?” Q said, and then, “Christ!” when Bond promptly passed out, collapsing in a heap at Q’s feet. Q stared down at him, dumbfounded. There was a large bump on Bond’s head, but otherwise he looked unharmed for someone who’d sent MI6 into a frenzy for the past twenty-four hours. 

“You bastard,” Q muttered. He debated leaving Bond there, but a cooler head prevailed and he dragged Bond inside before any of his neighbours could see. It took a lot of effort to heft Bond up – the man was _heavy_ , some twelve stones of dead weight – and onto the sofa. Ram took off running, brave thing that he was, but Byte was right there sticking her nose into Bond’s face and walking all over him. Q left her to do it and went into the kitchen to brew some tea.

Bond grunted about five minutes later. Q smiled to himself. Byte did have very interesting methods of waking people up. 

“Q?” Bond called out. “I seem to have one of your cats on me.”

“You are on her sofa,” Q responded, walking back into the room. Byte was sprawled across Bond’s chest, purring up a storm. Bond had one hand tangled in her fur and was scratching her belly.

He looked up at Q and grinned. “That’s alright. It’s been a while since I laid down with someone so beautiful.”

Q rolled his eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“I needed a place to crash.”

“And you couldn’t have gone to a hotel?” Q asked. 00-agents didn’t tend to play well together, and most of the regular agents were too afraid of them to do anything more than slam the door in Bond’s face. 006 and 007 got along terrifyingly well, but 006 was out of the country at the moment. He spared a moment to wonder what had happened to Bond’s flat, but figured that it had been sold when Bond left. Had the man not found a new place in the past six months? Where on earth had he been staying during downtime?

“Are you saying you’d kick an injured agent out of your flat?”

“ _Are_ you injured? I better not wake up tomorrow morning to find you dead on my sofa.”

Bond smiled. “Does that mean I get to stay?”

Q considered the logistics of trying to get Bond out of his flat, weighed that against the very long two days he’d had, and decided it wasn’t worth the battle. “If you stay, you make breakfast tomorrow.” He turned on his heel and wandered down the hall, pointedly closing his bedroom door.

Somehow, he wasn’t surprised to wake up in the morning to find Bond gone and a plate of toast and sliced fruit with a hot cup of tea waiting for him on the table.

That was odd enough, but then it kept happening. Not after every mission, but after any mission where Bond was wounded or went out of reach for any length of time, he would show up on Q’s doorstep. He’d spend the night on the sofa and then be gone by the time morning came. Which meant that out of roughly twenty missions, Q had a visitor for fourteen of them. Not the best odds, but that was a 00-agent for you.

It only became concerning when he realized that Bond was starting to show up more often. It took him little effort to work out the correlation: now Bond was coming over after honeypot missions. Q wasn’t sure what to think of this new development, particularly when Bond started bringing him back trinkets. A box of fine chocolate, pastries from a Parisian bakery, exotic teas, a green quartz crystal, a miniature teddy bear, an expensive pen: the gifts littered the edge of Q’s desk, and he had more hidden away in the drawers.

Over a period of six months, Bond slept on his sofa over a hundred times. 

“It’s like he’s flirting with you,” Eve said thoughtfully, dropping take away on Q’s desk. She pulled up a chair, not waiting for an invitation, and sat. 

“He knows I’m not interested.”

“But he’s doing it anyway. Maybe he likes a challenge.”

The smile slid off Q’s face and he busied himself opening up a carton of noodles. He didn’t want Bond to be another person who couldn’t take no for an answer. “I haven’t asked.”

Eve’s eyes flicked up at his tone, and she straightened. “Oh, Q, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“It’s fine,” Q muttered, even though it wasn’t. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had tried to ‘wine and dine him’ into changing his mind. As though he could flip a switch and decide that he wanted to fall in love, or become sexually attracted to someone. As though he hadn’t tried doing just that, multiple times over, in his youth.

“No, it’s not,” Eve said, sounding apologetic. “Maybe he just wants to be friends.”

Q stopped with a forkful of noodles midway into his mouth to stare at her.

“It could happen,” Eve said, grabbing a carton of her own. She opened it aggressively. “I mean, it’s Bond. He basically has no idea how to connect with a human other than through sex or punching them. In a way, it’s kind of sweet.”

“Sweet,” Q repeated dryly. “That’s one way to look at it. I feel like I’ve adopted another cat that keeps bringing me presents.”

“At least he’s not bringing you dead nice,” said Eve.

“Please don’t give him any ideas.”

Eve smiled into her carton. "In all honesty, you should consider yourself special. This is the longest he's ever gone without hitting on someone."

"I don't feel special," Q said plaintively. "I just want my sofa back."

"Do you?" she asked, pinning him with a knowing look. "So if Bond stopped showing up tomorrow, you would be okay with that? You wouldn't miss him or worry about him?"

"He's a 00-agent. I worry about all of them," Q said, knowing it was a weak defence, but unable to come up with anyone more concrete than that. Because damn it all, Eve was right and they both knew it. Somehow, Bond had got under his skin. He received way more liberties than the other 00-agents combined; even Q's scoldings about missing or destroyed equipment had become fonder than Q wanted to admit. 

She smirked at him, but all too quickly her smirk faded away into something wistful. "Just be careful, Q."

"What do you mean?"

"I know everyone thinks of Bond as a playboy, and he is. But I'm convinced that somewhere in there, he does have a heart," Eve said. "He must trust you if he's kipping on your sofa. He certainly never slept on mine." And there it was, a flash of something bitter in her face that made Q uncomfortable. If Eve noticed, she didn't let on, finishing with, "You could end up breaking it, if you're not careful."

"I hardly think I'm that important," Q said, setting his carton of food down. He'd lost his appetite.

Eve shrugged. "Maybe not. Perhaps I'm wrong."

The chances of Eve being wrong were extraordinarily slim and they both knew it. Q was relieved when 003 interrupted their meal five minutes later, bringing back a half-melted gun and a charred laptop. Eve slipped out while Q was scolding 003. Q pretended he didn't notice that she was going. That was not a conversation that he wanted to finish.

He spent the next six hours successfully hacking into the laptop and removing the information it contained, scanning it to be certain that it was safe, and then handing it out to his minions to be thoroughly vetted. He'd honestly forgotten all about his conversation with Eve until he returned to his flat some ten hours later and found that Byte had staked out her favourite spot on Bond's knee. Even Ram had got closer, settling down on the back of the sofa, just out of arm's reach.

"Hello," Bond said, as though this was normal. Maybe it was now.

"You're going to have to start paying rent," Q said. He had no idea why he said it, but he did.

"Okay."

"Okay?"

Bond shrugged. "I have money. If I'm paying rent, I would like a bedroom. This sofa isn't the most comfortable." He stretched as best he could without dislodging Bye. "Though I've slept on worse."

"I should hope you're not comparing my sofa to a sewer," Q said, naming the last place that Bond had spent the night. He stalked across the room, feeling oddly unsettled. "You can have the guest room, I suppose. There is a bed in there."

"Or we could share."

"Ha!" Q exclaimed, whirling around to point a finger at him. "You do want to sleep with me."

"Well, yes," Bond said, looking at him in bemusement, as though Q was the outlier here. "I sleep better when someone else is in the bed with me, though I realize how strange that sounds for a 00-agent. Besides, your bed is very comfortable."

"How do you know how comfortable my bed is?" Q demanded, momentarily sidetracked. He just as quickly decided he did not want to know and shook his head. "No, never mind. I should have known. I told you months ago that I am asexual and aromantic. I do not have sex and I do not fall in love, nor will I ever do so. I'm not sure what you're hoping to accomplish, but if you're here because you're hoping to coax me into doing either of those things, you're wasting your time!" He was panting a bit as he finished his speech.

"Are you finished?" Bond asked, very quietly.

Q eyed him and then sighed. "Yes."

"Good. Q, I don't want to have sex with you."

"Really? Why not?" Q asked, mildly offended.

"I'd rather not answer that, if it's all the same to you," Bond said dryly. "I'm not looking for you to fall in love, either. I don't think I even know what that is." He looked to the side, face cast in shadow. "I thought I did, but... maybe that kind of love isn't even something that I can feel."

Q stared at him.

"I've been using you, if you want to know the truth. Everyone else demands something of me, whether it's sex or something else. You didn't. You never have. I knew I could come here and not have to do anything. I could just... be. The trinkets were my way of saying thank you."

The silence dragged on because Q did not know how to respond, and at some point Bond became uncomfortable with his honesty. He stared to move, wrapping both hands around Byte's midsection to life her. Predictably, Byte hissed in displeasure - she was a finicky thing once she got comfortable - and dugs her claws into Bond's thigh to prevent being moved. Bond winced, but a look of determination quickly settled on his face.

"Stop it," Q said finally, unable to watch the - frankly pathetic - battle any longer. "MI6 would never let you live it down if they found out a cat beat you in a fight."

"I can take her," Bond said, though he didn't sound very sure, and he released Byte quickly. She sniffed once for good measure and then settled back down, looking like a queen.

"She would make you regret saying that," Q said, with what he feared was a very soppy smile. He sank down into a chair opposite Bond, and the two of them just looked at each other for a moment. Q wasn't sure what to say. His mind was reeling after Bond's confession.

It had never once occurred to him that Bond might be seeking him out for that reason. But he supposed that in a way, it did make a certain amount of sense. Bond's relationships had the tendency to crash and burn spectacularly. And he had sex constantly on missions. After a time, that would become rather tedious. No wonder he was searching for someone that could reliably offer him a relief, if not sanctuary, from both of those things.

The real question was how Q felt about it. He didn't know if he liked being used in that way, but then again he had been using Bond as well. He could admit, if only to himself, that Bond's companionship was very nice. He'd never had a flatmate who knew exactly what Q did for a living. He'd never had a flatmate that killed people for a living, either; it was remarkable how much better he slept, feeling safe, when Bond was here. And he'd never spent time with anyone who didn't want things from him that he couldn't give.

"Q?" Bond said finally. He sounded - not scared, exactly, but far more timid than Q had expected.

"I'm not sure about sharing the bed," Q said. "We'll have to test it. I haven't slept with anyone in years."

"I can take the guest room, it's not a big deal."

"I said we'd test it and I mean it. Can't you ever just do something that you're told without arguing?"

Bond smiled. "No. I also sleep with a gun under my pillow, if we're being honest."

"I fall asleep with my laptop still on my lap all the time," Q admitted. It was one of the reasons he'd built his laptop to be as strong as it was, because there had been a couple of times when he'd been jolted awake by his laptop falling off the bed. 

"That doesn't surprise me at all."

Q smiled too then, watching Bond out of the corner of his eye. It felt a little bit like things had slotted into place, and the feeling that was something wasn't exactly right had finally gone away. It felt, for the first time in weeks, that this was normal.

"You can order the take away, then," he decided. "I'm going to change into my pyjamas."

"Mind the luggage in the hall," Bond said, reaching for his mobile. 

"You've moved your things in. Of course you did," Q said under his breath, finding that there was a small selection of suitcases and bags in the guest room. It was presumptuous, but he found that he didn't mind. He suspected that from the moment he'd first let Bond sleep on the sofa, they had been headed in this very direction. He was surprisingly alright with that.

Needless to say, the rumours at MI6 swelled over the next month. Nothing stared secret for long, of course, and word quickly spread that Bond and Q were living together. Bond seemed to take delight in spreading seeds by telling each person a different story - never the same one twice, incidentally - and watching people fall all over themselves in their rush to spread the obvious rumours; Q just gave anyone who asked a blank look and informed that his living arrangements were no one's concern. The only outlier was Eve, who received a pat on the hand and a solemn promise that Bond's heart was well in hand.

And if he leaned into the arm that Bond wrapped around his shoulders as they left headquarters together, well. It was a little bit fun watching polished secret agents go out of their minds with curiosity.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://tsuki-chibi.tumblr.com/).


End file.
